Tiong Bahru history; Gong Xi Fa Cai!; Tiong Bahru, historic Art Deco Singapore neighbourhood; Geraldene Lowe, national treasure; black-and-white houses, Emerald Hill, Little India and Katong; Tiong Bahru architecture and heritage trail; Lynn & Kim’s gorgeous flat; history of 78 Moh Guan Terrace; eclectic shopping; Tiong Bahru Market; foodies or greedies?; the price of eggs; the price of molestation!
Happy Year of the Dragon!
It’s always good to be back in Singapore. First of all, Gong Xi Fa Cai and Happy Chinese New Year at the start of this auspicious Year of the Wood Dragon. Here’s a photo I took in Upper Cross Street, Chinatown.
And here’s another one, less flamboyant, taken in Tiong Bahru. The red sign has a kind of retro look that could place it in any era during the past century, don’t you think?
Located in the south of the island, this chic and charming precinct, “awash with good eateries and eclectic shops”, stretches over some three kilometres.
Why “Tiong Bahru Revisited”? I blogged about this historic Singapore neighbourhood back in 2017, when our friend Matt let us stay in the fabulous flat he owned at that time. (Here’s a link to that post.)
I’ve loved Tiong Bahru ever since doing a walking tour of this picturesque neighbourhood with the wonderful Geraldene Lowe, who became my friend and sometime collaborator. Expat Living Singapore magazine published several articles that I wrote about her various amazing tours.
Here are just four of them, with links to my PDFs*:
- British colonial black-and-white houses, click B&WTour
- Shophouses in Emerald Hill, click EmeraldHillHistory
- Little India, click LittleIndiaTour
- Colourful Katong, click ColourfulKatong
*Being PDFs, they may take a moment to open.
Remembering Geraldene
A veteran tour guide for more than 50 years, Geraldene received a Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to tourism. She was described as a “national treasure” when she retired in 2014 – handing the baton to Jane Iyer, who worked hard to develop Geraldene’s Tours into Jane’s Singapore Tours.
What’s to Love? – Tiong Bahru history
Tiong Bahru’s history gives it a distinctive character. It also has something of the laid-back vibe of Katong and the East Coast, though of course without the beach.
This was one of the island state’s first public housing estates. It was built in the 1930s by the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT), the predecessor to the HDB, or Housing Development Board, of today.
Most of its buildings are no more than five storeys high. Their design is “a mixture of Nanyang style and Art Moderne, a popular architectural design of the 1930s that emphasises long, horizontal lines with rounded ends”. You could also just call it Art Deco… I would.
From the excellent website Remember Singapore, together with a detailed National Heritage Board document from nhb.gov.sg, see here, the area was once part of a sprawling Chinese cemetery. According to a Straits Times report of 26 June 1930, “the land was almost all evil-smelling swamp”. Reclaiming these 72 acres of land for development was a “mammoth task” that involved levelling several nearby hills to fill in the pestilential swamp.
Tiong Bahru was initially fairly high-end, housing Chinese “of the clerical class” as not many ordinary people could afford the $25 monthly rent. Rich tycoons kept their mistresses there; and a few more affluent European families had moved in by August 1939.
Shortly after WW2, more flats were added. As people moved into the area, it evolved into a more mixed community. In recent decades, it has become one of Singapore’s hippest residential districts.
All its streets are named after early Chinese pioneers and self-made, wealthy entrepreneurs. Yong Siak Street and Yong Siak Court, for example, are named after Tan Yong Siak (1831-1914), a charitable Teochew trader and Chinese leader.
Pre-30s
These shophouses in Tiong Bahru Road predate the Tiong Bahru public housing development. Back in the 1830s, Sir Stamford Raffles himself regulated for these sheltered five-foot ways in front of shophouses, to protect pedestrians from both the tropical sun and frequent downpours. You see them in the Art Deco estate, too, and they’re still an important feature in keeping the city comfortably walkable.
Historical Goosebumps
This time around, we stayed at our friends Lynn and Kim’s recently acquired and beautifully renovated second-floor “walk up” at 78 Guan Chuan Street. A walk-up is exactly what it sounds like: a block with no lifts, so you’ll thank yourself for having packed lightly!
After that, no new flats were built in the area until the 1950s. In 1954, 1,258 more flats were added in response to the massive post-war housing shortage.
In 2003, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) shortlisted 20 blocks of the pre-WWII flats (bounded by Seng Poh Road, Tiong Poh Road and Moh Guan Terrace) for conservation.
Tiong Bahru Heritage Trail
Tiong Bahru Market
Tiong Bahru Market and Food Centre, just down Seng Poh Road from Lynn and Kim’s flat, is the heart of Tiong Bahru. Part of a designated heritage trail with ten other points of interest, it was rebuilt in 2004 on the site of the previous Seng Poh Road Market, some version of which has been operating since before WWII.
Roy and the Seductive Dancing Girl of Seng Poh Garden
On the corner of Moh Guan Terrace and Seng Poh Road, leafy little Seng Poh Garden was landscaped only in 1972.
Singapore’s leading sculptor of the time, Lim Nang Sen, was commissioned to do something in a hurry. He completed this 1.2m-high dancing girl in just two weeks: made of concrete, she cost just $2,000. His more famous sculpture of the Merlion, at the Esplanade, was unveiled in the same year. Hmm.
Also on the heritage trail is Tiong Bahru Community Centre, originally established in 1951 as Singapore’s very first community centre. A series of former air-raid shelters were used as the initial premises.
Tiong Bahru history: 78 Moh Guan Terrace
78 Moh Guan Terrace is famous not only for being the only building in a Singapore public housing project designed to include an air raid shelter, but also for its distinctive “horseshoe-shaped” exterior.
The largest block in Tiong Bahru, it was completed in 1940 and still has the air raid shelters and storage rooms designed for use during WWII.
On the ground floor is one of Tiong Bahru’s oldest coffee shops, Hua Bee, dating from the 1940s. Just this week, I learnt from Lynn, who sent me the photos below, that the restaurant downstairs, the cool Japanese Bincho at Hua Bee, has been replaced by Dirty Supper. “The auntie at Hua Bee has been serving chicken noodles there forever,” Lynn told me. But only until 2.30pm each day, when the place would become Bincho, and “diners/cocktailers” would enter from the rear. The bar felt like a speakeasy, she said. I’m hoping that Hua Bee is still operational; anything else would be unthinkable.
Eclectic Shopping
There are many more examples, but this one really took our fancy: Aphorism Antiques, at 72 Seng Poh Road.
Foodies or Greedies?
We, the food-obsessed, like to think of ourselves as foodies, though “greedies” may be more accurate. Even while enjoying a great meal somewhere, we’ll be talking about other kinds of food, or the food at other places. Devouring dahl at our favourite local Indian, we’ll be reminiscing about the best bunny-chows in Durban, or planning a foray to the Banana Leaf Apollo in Little India, Singapore. Does that sound like you?
It’s probably safe to say that no neighbourhood in Singapore can be famous for anything if it’s not also famous for food. That holds true for everywhere from Little India, Chinatown, Geylang and Katong, to Dempsey, Changi Village… and of course, Tiong Bahru.
Tiong Bahru Bakery (56 Eng Hoon Street), for example, is so celebrated that it’s been franchised throughout the island to at least 18 arguably over-priced venues. None has croissants as good as the original shop, in my opinion… and here it is.
Tiong Bahru History: TB Coffee House
Then there’s the Toast Box, whose total of 77-plus outlets makes TB Bakery look small-time. Generally located in anodyne malls, the newish Toast Box-owned Tiong Bahru Coffee House (58 Seng Poh Road) is delightful. In addition to the Toast Box’s standard menu of local breakfast-y staples like half-boiled eggs and kaya toast, it also serves nostalgic Singapore and Malaysian specialties such as claypot chicken curry, old-school Hainanese pork chop, Teochew fish soup, and Malaysian-style cakes, or kueh-kueh.
I know… I tell people we’re low-carb eaters who skip breakfast; and then I post evidence of us tucking into Malaysian kueh-kueh, washed down with coffee and tea laced with condensed milk. Yes, you need the condensed milk to offset the rocket-fuel effect of this shocking coffee, as well as to protect any remaining tooth enamel.
Like most city neighbourhoods, Tiong Bahru is even prettier at night:
More Food for Thought
Eating out in Singapore doesn’t have to be expensive… though it can be, of course. Here’s my favourite hawker centre lunch of yong tau foo, with change from a $10 note.
You could have about 40 hawker centre or food court lunches like this for the cost of a single champagne brunch at the Ritz-Carlton’s The Colony, for example. Not that the Colony isn’t worth it!
Here we are with Paul and Salinah in the Ritz-Carlton’s foyer, suitably bedecked to celebrate the Chinese New Year of the Dragon.
Not so Fast!
Before you think life is all foie gras, oysters and sunny skies in Singapore, here’s a sobering reminder of the seamy underbelly of this glamorous metropolis.
Everyone knows about the chewing-gum ban. The sale or importation of gum were outlawed in 1992 by an irate Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong government, after one or more silly sod/s used their chewed gum to jam the door of an MRT train.
Now you also know that copping a feel, more formally known as molestation, is also frowned upon. These signs were new since our last visit:
Up next?
Something on Singapore Airlines, perhaps?
